Last Friday, Portico Quartet played in Newman Rooms to an enrapt audience. If you don’t know them, then I’m in a tricky position, because they’re very difficult to describe. They’ve been called everything from Jazz to Ambient, and that night they proved why, shifting through different tones and styles with enormous fluidity and ease. The only constants were a sense of calm from the hypnotic beats that layered every song, and the driving urgency infusing every tone, keeping everyone in the audience rocked forward for more.
I spoke to Milo before the gig, who explained that Portico Quartet aren’t afraid to shift their roles: “The band used to be the drummer plays drums, Jack plays sax, hang player plays hang, I play bass and basically that was it, we never went beyond our tools which were in front of us, that was the sound you got. Now we felt that that was as far as we wanted to go with that kind of pallet of sounds.” It was evident that night, when the four (occasionally accompanied by Cornelia) edged across the low stage from instrument to instrument, combining differently to create a different sound in every piece.
This sense of restless adventure summed up my interview with Milo, who seems to resist stasis. When asked how he would describe the London based band he replied; “Well we’ve never been able to describe ourselves, whatever anyone thought we might do we didn’t do that!” He did, however, consent to pin them down to “something in between live electronic, semi-electronic music.”
They’re currently working on a new album, though giving occasional gigs. Milo seemed excited about this “completely fresh material”, which will be using a lot of vocalist collaborations, especially after the success of ‘Steepless’, a collaboration with the eerily beautiful if more than slightly terrifying Cornelia.
Each of their gigs, though, has something individually unique about them, perhaps explained by the group’s focus on building acoustics, “looking at the capabilities of each venue so we can make it a proper sonic experience” as Milo put it, characterizing the sheer amount of thought and care that seems to go into everything the band touches. This Newman Rooms gig was exceptionally intimate and personal, especially in comparison to their exuberant Koko gig in April.
Portico Quartet retain their minimalist ambience, driven bass and superb sax-playing, yet they have changed. Their melodies are harder to find, but even more rewarding when discovered. Their build-ups are longer, but intense in their house-like suspension. They no longer stick to their hang/bass/sax/drums formation: Milo excitedly said “We’re making the instrumentation as wide as it can be, it can be anything now”, and I believe him. Portico Quartet refuse to be pinned down; after all, as Milo said, “It’s about forward progression”.
Portico Quartet’s third, self-titled album is available now on iTunes.
